As we bring an end to our week-long fund-raising drive to keep the Traveler on-line, we'd like to thank the many readers who responded with donations, and make a final request to those sitting on the fence.
Hard to believe, what with all the incredible geology with its borders, but Arches National Park never really has had a formal climbing and canyoneering management plan. Well, that soon will be rectified.
Let's see how much you know about the intricate business of passing along genes in our national parks. Answers are at the end. If we catch you peeking, we'll make you write on the whiteboard 100 times: "Bacterial conjugation, which is sometime erroneously characterized as the bacterial equivalent of sexual reproduction, cannot succeed unless the donor bacterium hosts a plasmid, transposon, or similar genetic element that is conjugative or mobilizable."
The mile-long stroll down Park Avenue in Arches National Park drops you into the redrock landscape, as walls of sandstone tower above you on both sides of the trail. Here you'll find one of the park's well-known rock sculptures, that of Nefertiti.
When the Bush administration late in 2008 tried to auction energy leases near national parks in Utah, there was an outcry by many who considered siting oil and gas exploration projects next to parks was anathema. The Obama administration quickly reversed the decision, but the debate over whether to locate energy projects next to parks continues.
The showy tamarisk tree, aka "Saltcedar," long has been reviled as a thirsty scourge of Western national park riparian areas. But new research shows it's not any thirstier than some native species. However, tamarisk isn't valued as highly as cottonwoods and willows by some bird species, the studies say.
Against fears that the white-sand beaches of Gulf Islands National Seashore soon might be darkened by an oily slick from the Deepwater Horizon disaster, natural gas production flows quietly from Padre Islands National Seashore.